Washing Produce Will Not Remove Pesticides, According to a New Report

In April, Consumer Reports released its data showing an “alarming” amount of pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables sold in American grocery stores. Those hazardous pesticides include organophosphates, which have been shown to have “neurodevelopmental effects,” and carbamate insecticides, which also have “toxic effects such as interfering with the reproductive systems and fetal development.” While this report was distressing on its own, a new study is showing that washing your produce does not remove all the pesticide residues found on food. 

The paper, published in the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters, was meant to showcase the research team’s new process to detect pesticides in food — which is indeed a spectacular scientific step forward — the paper also unveiled that “the risk of pesticide ingestion from fruits cannot be avoided by simple washing.” And even peeling may not be enough. “Notably, the distribution of pesticides in the apple peel and pulp layers is visualized through Raman imaging, confirming that the pesticides penetrate the peel layer into the pulp layer.” However, the team noted that peeling is better than doing nothing at all.

“We believe that the peeling operation can effectively avoid the hazards of pesticides in the fruit’s epidermis and near-epidermal pulp, thereby reducing the probability of ingesting pesticides,” the researchers wrote in their report. Dongdong Ye, a professor at China’s School of Materials and Chemistry at Anhui Agricultural University and an author of the paper, additionally shared with The Guardian, “Rather than fostering undue apprehension, the research posits that peeling can effectively eliminate nearly all pesticide residues, contrasted with the frequently recommended practice of washing.”

Michael Hanson, a senior scientist at Consumer Reports, also shared with The Guardian that the team’s new measuring technique could prove, well, fruitful, to other scientists to understand how pesticide residue affects produce long after it’s plucked from the earth. 

“This is actually useful for understanding how these pesticides move in,” Hansen added. “This is more science showing that, yes, there are concerns. Don’t just think that washing is going to help you.”

One glimmer of hope here is that the Consumer Reports analysis also noted that pesticides presented “little to worry about” in about two-thirds of the foods it tested, including “nearly all organic ones,” Food & Wine previously reported. Consumer Reports added that the biggest risks are caused by just a few pesticides, and those are “concentrated in a handful of foods, grown on a small fraction of U.S. farmland,” which “makes it easier to identify the problems and develop targeted solutions.” Still, if it makes you uneasy, try peeling those carrots tonight instead.